Laura Bush, Ex-Teacher, Goes Back to Kindergarten [NYT]

October 17, 2001

Laura Bush, Ex-Teacher, Goes Back to Kindergarten

By RONALD SMOTHERS

NEWARK, Oct. 16 — Amid tight security and with reporters in tow, the first lady, Laura Bush, visited the brightly colored kindergarten classroom of an elementary school here today where she read a story, gave a geography lesson and otherwise soothed 18 5-year-olds with hugs, tender touches and cooing words.

The occasion was Teach for America Week 2001, during which the organization Teach for America, which places college graduates as teachers for two years in schools in some of the nation's poorest neighborhoods, asks public figures to highlight the importance of teaching by spending an hour in a classroom.

Ms. Bush, a former teacher herself, seemed to warm to the task instantly.

She skillfully gathered the students on a luminous red and blue rug at the South 17th Street School here and held their attention, all the while managing to soothe Tydaysiah Chambers, whose fingers had been stepped on by a classmate in the rush for a space close to the first lady.

"She didn't mean to do it," she whispered reassuringly to Tydaysiah as she continued to direct the students to sit in a semicircle for the reading of "Grandfather's Journey" by Allen Say.

The story, which was selected by Mrs. Bush, tells of a Japanese man who immigrated to the United States early in the 20th century but became homesick and returned to Japan, where he married and raised a family whom he regaled with stories of his time in America.

Wendy Kopp, president and founder of Teach for America, said that it had placed some 7,000 teachers in schools in 16 urban and rural areas since its founding in 1989. During its weeklong observances over the last four years, appearances like that of Mrs. Bush, she said, help focus the nation on "our most pressing domestic issues, including poverty and the quality of education."

Mark Williams, 23, the Teach for America recruit whose kindergarten class Mrs. Bush visited for the 30- minute stay, said that the first lady grabbed the class's attention immediately, adding that she "seems to really like being in a classroom."

Mr. Williams, a native of Wilmington, Del., who was headed to medical school when he decided to take off two years to teach, said that he and the first lady talked briefly about Teach for America's goals and that he came away with the idea that "She is ever so thankful for teachers because she was so gracious in thanking us for being teachers."

The first lady's visit became known to a small group at the school just last Friday. Early this morning, before students began arriving, bomb-sniffing dogs were brought in. Police lines went up after that, restricting access to the block. Secret Service agents were almost unobtrusive, blending into their surroundings, according to Mr. Williams and some of the other teachers.

After the reading lesson, Mrs. Bush gave some small insight in how she had coped in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, in an interview broadcast on WNBC-TV. She said that she and President Bush do not talk much about the "decisions of the day" during their family time together and instead play with their pets, laugh and discuss the books each is reading.

"Since Sept. 11, the times when I have been with children have been very comforting for me," she said, reflecting on her visit to the Newark school.

Well, Summer, as a homeschool mom, I do tend to think it's virtually "all" phonics. :) Whole language teaches kids to look at words as a whole instead of breaking the words down into their sound symbols. Just as children need consistent practice in left to right orientation, they also need consistent practice in decoding from left to right.

Ya' know, good readers will learn to read with just about any method of instruction, while poor readers who need extra help are done a serious disservice by being confused by the whole language approach. Besides, "whole language" is extremely time consuming and expensive. I can teach a child to read with a little phonics primer, while whole language instruction costs the taxpayer a fortune, and kids spend hours "playing" at reading, instead of actually learning to read.

Just my 2 cents. Glad to see you around. :)

"Unfortunately, teaching is not a very attractive profession to many people qualified to teach. Low pay and long hours, dead end opportunity in terms of greater career advancement, and dim-wit administrators are all part of the picture."

Yes, you are soooooo right. I love children. I love to teach. When I finish homeschooling my own children, I doubt that I'll be tempted to enter the bureaucratic maze of American public education. Sad, but true. I'll probably volunteer as a literacy volunteer when I find the time, to help all the folks who never learned to read in school. :)

"Whole language teaches kids to look at words as a whole"

I agree with you in that what you cite above is the weakest part of "whole language" -- but, using the words in context, in reading (and, in reading good literature) and writing, and integrating: speaking, writing, reading, listening -- these are the elements of what some term "whole language" that I strongly endorse.

I love children. I love to teach

Same here. But, oddly enough, "loving children," and "loving teaching," too often has very little to do with the profession of teaching in comparison with other time-consuming tasks. The teaching part of teaching I always liked -- and, if that was actually the JOB, then, I might still want to be a teacher right now. But, teaching is NOT what most teachers do for the vast majority of their time in the classroom. If they do teach, it is almost incidental.

joathome, BTW, it's nice to chat with you again too. I was thinking about what I just wrote here, and I realized this: the one place where I felt I was able to teach was in higher education. Because, there, I had a BLOCK of time to teach, uninterupted, and TIME to plan. But, on the elementary level, I would try and try to plan what I wanted to do, and there was simply NEVER enough time for me to PLAN and then DO it. I never ever once came home from working in an elementary school or middle school feeling like this: "Wow! I had a good day today! I did everything I wanted to do!"

But, in higher ed, I actaually DID have days when I came home and thought: "Wow! I had a great class tonight! I got to everything I wanted to do -- and, MORE than I planned, and it was GREAT!"

If I teach again in the near future, it will probably be in higher ed -- because there, I felt some success. In elementary and middle schools, despite improvements in the students' learning, higher test scores, etc., all the rest of it -- I never once felt like I had a successful day. Never once. Because I knew: I wanted to do THIS today, but because of THIS cr*p I had to deal with today, I DIDN'T GET TO IT. AGAIN. It's a terrible feeling.

I'd like to dismantle the NEA, and the gazillion PC ideas that are currently strangling the education of too many of America's youth.

I sure agree with you on this joathome!! The NEA is corrupt down to its crayola shavings, and needs to be discarded!

As to the PC ideas, I believe (and pray) that 9/11 has helped remove many of them, and that others will follow. I believe that the minority ACLU types that have kept school administrators and teachers huddled in a corner afraid of everything right and good, have at least temporarily, been silenced.

Perhaps now is the time to reclaim public schools as AMERICAN institutions, and get them out of the hands of the leftists!

And, one more thing, joathome -- gee, you reall got me started here!

It may sound like I dismissed my students' success as the measure for my own success as a teacher. But, I didn't -- that's why I know I really WAS a successful teacher.

The struggle I described to you was a very private struggle raging inside of me: this desire to set goals AND to achieve my daily goals in teaching. I did not like that I always felt I had reached high, and fallen short. Yes, I still had success with my students. Yet, in my own heart: why can't I ever have ONE day where I can feel GREAT about my job as a teacher at the end of the day? I felt great about my students, but, looking at TEACHING made me feel frustrated in my desire and the result. In teaching, aiming high means: I am always coming up short. But, yes, I am having success with my students, and I guess that should count more in my own private scorecard.

But, I came to teaching after being in other professions. In other professions, there is a sense of completeness, of finishing a project, and the feeling of accomplishment that comes with that. In teaching, it is unfinished business at all times. As soon as my student reaches this learning objective, I do not see my task as a teacher as "done" -- it is NOT done, because now, I have this OTHER learning objective in mind. And this feeling of NEVER being able to say: I am finished for today (as I am always taking a ton of work home), is so frustrating. I am never finished in teaching. Perhaps over a decade or more, I would have been able to handle that, or with the help of a mentor I could have redirected that feeling, but, instead, day in and day out, I would come home feeling, in some way, like a failure. And, no one can stand to go to work everyday knowing that regardless of how much one does accomplish, it is not nearly enough, at least in my view.

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